Framework X: A Decade of Research, Collaboration, and Treatment

May 9–25, 2014

Framework X showcases this year’s results of the Museum’s frame conservation apprenticeship program. In this program, now in its tenth year, Smith College and other Five-College students are trained by Chief Preparator William Myers and Associate Director David Dempsey in the techniques of frame conservation. Featured in this installation are two historically accurate frames, the first for George William Bellows, Pennsylvania Excavation (1907), and the second for William Baxter Closson, Fighting Peacocks. Two frames were also carefully conserved, a late 19th-century American frame in the style of Louis XV and the frame for Dwight William Tryon, November Evening (1924).

Framework X would like to thank Adeline Shaw Myers (class of 2005), who aided in the design and gilding of the Bellows frame. Additional thanks are due to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Frame and Furniture Conservation labs, and especially to Andres Haines and Gordon Hanlon. Thanks go to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for their assistance concerning the construction of the Bellows frame, and in particular to Teri Carbone, Curator of American Art, and Kristen Patterson, Assistant Paintings Conservator. Lynn Roberts, Art and Frame Historian (Tunbridge Wells, UK), played a pivotal role in both the design of the Bellows frame and the conservation of the Stanford White frame for the Dwight Tryon. Special thanks to Elisabeth Gatti (class of 1985) and her team at the Valley Veterinary Clinic in Hadley, MA, who assisted in the X-Ray investigation of the Stanford White frame. Stacy Finkelstein, the Visual Arts Digital Coordinator in the Smith College Art Department, assisted in the photo documentation of the treatment and X-ray of the Stanford White frame. Many thanks go to James Hume, woodshop technician in the Smith College Art Department, and David Dempsey, Associate Director for Museum Services at SCMA, for milling the frames for the Closson and the Bellows paintings respectively.